The Foo Fighters song that reminds Pat Smear of Kurt Cobain
Whilst former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl might lead Foo Fighters, their lineup also includes another man who had a part to play in the grunge trio’s story: Pat Smear. The Californian musician had made his name as the lead guitarist and co-founder of the widely influential punk band The Germs before being hired as the touring rhythm guitarist in Nirvana in 1993.
Discussing his close friend, Grohl once explained in the Foo Fighters documentary Back and Forth: “Pat is from this legendary punk rock band called The Germs that we all grew up listening to. There was no one more badass than The Germs. The Germs didn’t give a fuck.”
Although Smear was in Nirvana for a total of roughly six months between 1993 and 1994, he was a part of some of their most iconic moments, including SNL and MTV Unplugged. This meant that he was in the band when they were the biggest in the world and saw their legendary frontman, Kurt Cobain, at the end of his life, when fame, drugs and mental health issues were starting to take their toll. Despite being in the band for such a short period, it says it all that fans often consider Smear a surviving member.
“For the last year of the band [Nirvana], it made the band a lot more fun to be in, having Pat in the band,” Grohl explained on The Howard Stern Show in 2021. During the same interview, Smear said: “It was only weird immediately, and then it got cool real fast.”
Given that Dave Grohl and Pat Smear are great friends and have a shared history from before Foo Fighters, it makes sense it would make its way into their music. According to the latter, their 2011 hit ‘Walk’ sticks out because it reminds him of Kurt Cobain, who took his own life in April 1994.
He told Rolling Stone in 2011: “Every night when he sings the line ‘I never want to die,’ I look at him every time and think of Kurt [Cobain.] Every single time. Because Kurt was, ‘I hate myself and I want to die.’ And that’s the opposite-ness of them. And I do so love being with life lovers.”
In that same interview, Grohl revealed that Cobain did inspire the anthem: “It kind of comes from the day after Kurt died. Waking up that morning and realising, ‘Oh, s—, he’s not here anymore. I am. Like, I get to wake up and he doesn’t. I’m making a cup of coffee. And he can’t. I’m gonna turn on the radio. And he won’t.’ That was a big revelation to me.”
He continued: “I think also in life, you get trapped in crisis, where you imagine there’s no way out. When really, if you dare to consider that crisis a blip on the radar, it’s easier to push through. And, yeah, I was just like, ‘I don’t want anyone to have that feeling that I had that morning.'”
Listen to ‘Walk’ below.